Softly Falling Read Free Page A

he ever convinced her to come with him to the Bar Dot. “I . . . I suppose I do. The Bar Dot is a huge spread.”
    “Papa told me his ranch was two thousand acres, so that must be huge. He also called it simply the Carteret, not Bar Dot.”
    Now what? Did he have to explain what had happened before this person would take another step? “It’s like this, ma’am,” he began, after a lengthy pause.
    She put up her hand, her eyes kind, the starch out of her, somehow. “There’s no ranch, eh?”
    Jee-rusalem Crickets, why in the world did Clarence Carteret have to be a fool and a coward who couldn’t even do his own dirty work? “There is and there isn’t.”
    She drew herself up taller, and he suddenly saw that this conversation was diminishing her and that she felt the need for height. He had done that a time or two in his life, when opposition loomed. Nothing loomed now except the disaster that was Clarence Carteret, and she somehow knew.
    “Papa doesn’t own it anymore, does he?” she asked, her voice soft.
    Jack shook his head, impressed with her courage, as though she had known all along that this was going to happen. The women he knew out West weren’t the type to shrink and faint at bad news when their own lives were hard enough, but Lily Carteret was a lady. He thought he heard a small sigh, but that was all.
    “Tell me, if you know: How did he lose this ranch that I will never see?”
    “He lost it in a card game.”
    Her head went back a little, but that was all. “I’m not surprised,” she said. “Would I have liked the ranch?”
    Even a deaf man would have heard the wistfulness in her voice. She was doing her dead level best not to show her disappointment.
    “Yeah, you would have liked it. Begging your pardon, ma’am, but two thousand acres is small potatoes out here. Still, there’s a wonderful little spring on the place, which I don’t think Clarence knew about. He, uh, didn’t spend much time there. Maybe he never saw the spring.”
    “Was there a house?”
    “More of a shack. Two rooms, but he put up wallpaper, if you can believe that.”
    “I can,” she said, getting into the spirit of the thing. “Papa has his standards.” Her shoulders sank a bit, as if she knew there was no pretense or courage to maintain, not with news like this. “You seem to know the place pretty well.”
    Go ahead and tell her , he thought. She’ll find out soon enough . “Yes’m, I do. I’m the fella who won the ranch in that card game.”
    Jack couldn’t help wincing, certain she would come apart now. She looked away, as though the magpie hawking and spitting on the saloon roof fascinated her more than speech. When she turned back, she was even smiling, and it looked genuine. You could have barreled Jack over with a broomstraw.
    “Sounds to me as though you love the place, Mr. Sinclair. How long have you owned it?”
    “It was the result of a January card game.”
    “Were spirits involved?”
    “Most certainly.” No point in telling her that the only drinking man was her father. She probably already knew. After Clarence Carteret, eyes red, won three hundred dollars and declared himself lucky, no force in the world could have kept him from slapping the deed on the table. Jack had seen gamblers like that before, but he was usually watching the game, not sitting at the table.
    He didn’t know what else to say. “It’s a grand little ranch,” he said, blundering on. “All fenced and with that spring.”
    “Does your wife like it too?”
    “No wife, ma’am. I have an old Mexican, name of Manuel, living there and taking care of Bismarck.”
    “Bismarck?”
    He saw the defeat in her eyes, and he didn’t know what to do. He could tell her about Bismarck, but maybe he should just get her to the Bar Dot so her slimy father could explain. Jack only made seventy-five dollars a month. No one paid him to mend a suddenly broken heart, which he knew he was looking at, even if the casual passerby